What Really Matters, pt. II [Heartprints]

¡Hola mi Gente!

I just received a call that one job prospect is the process of checking on my references. Send good thoughts.

Better yet, save your good thoughts/ prayers for the great singer, Etta James, who sadly is terminally ill. Love you, Etta…

* * *

Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wiser, more liberated and luminous state of being, to return to Eden, make friends with the snake and set up our computers among the wild apple trees.

 -- Tom Robbins, Wild Ducks Flying Backwards

Deep down we all intuitively know that our true calling is in reality a form of spiritual evolution. An integration of the Universal Principle, The Godhead, of  Love -- whatever the fuck you want to call it. 

Yet we spend an enormous amount of energy suppressing that awareness because to make it conscious is to recognize that most of our manipulations, our religious dogmas, our personal ambitions and dramas, and financial grabs are not merely counterproductive, but probably trivial. In some real way, our lives are a series of acts adding insult to injury. Our mission, whether we recognize it or not, is to do away with the trivial pursuits and take on the responsibility of an infinite, hard-won joy that comes from a psycho-spiritual integration. Or, at the very least, get to taste the perfect slice of pizza before we move on. ::grin:: 

We are now living at a point in time in which the collective choices we make will either lead us to certain self-destruction on one side or toward a miraculous evolutionary quantum leap on the other. Sometimes my posts on personal liberation -- what I like to call conscious evolution -- seem to me self-indulgent. It’s winter in America and in this prolonged season of violence and war on every level, perhaps concentrating on self-improvement seems a wee bit trivial. But just maybe, taking a step back and looking at the world we have created with a light heart can help us see it more clearly. Perhaps with fresh eyes we can learn to respond more wisely to the crucial choices we have before us.

Do we continue our individual trivial pursuits, or choose to take on the primal and all-important task of sowing the seeds of joy and peace in our hearts; do we use the uniquely human gift of reason to come up with meaningful solutions to the challenges that face us, acting with wisdom to change a global climate bereft of love and compassion. And in case you haven’t noticed, our previous choices have placed us on the ever-increasing endangered species list. 

Sure, I know many of you are saying that you would love to have all these things. As any well-trained beauty contestant would tell it, you want world peace (or at least a safer world) and you want to prevent our world from turning into ash. You might be saying however, that sure, you want world peace, but so what? You might tell me that the problems we face are too large and that nothing you do will make a difference.

And my answer to you is, damn skippy

I know how that feels. I know the despair that sometimes comes from trying to make a difference. But I’m dense, I will fight to the last, even if I knew my struggle was doomed and it wouldn’t make a difference, I refuse to accept the way things are without a fight.

Perhaps it would be useful if we start where we are…

The first thing we have to grapple with is the possibility that our ideas about money, power, and dogma have outgrown their usefulness. In fact, all this competitiveness, self-righteous warring, in combination with technological advances used in the service to strengthen our status and satisfy our material desires, just might be making matters worse. Interestingly, some have observed that in spite of tremendous poverty and disease, people in undeveloped nations seem happier, more peaceful, less stressed out, and less anxiety-ridden than those “more fortunate” citizens of the developed countries. 

I can say this is true of poor people, or people who I’ve known who were raised in poverty (as I was). We didn’t have depression and we didn’t feel isolated or alienated. There were times we were hungry, but our lives were full of the things that really matter: love, family, connection.

Perhaps this is a sign that we should be looking for another way of being and doing.

I think the crucial question is, “How am I personally contributing to co-creating the world we live in.” As a mental health practitioner and social activist, I know too well true healing comes from a sense of personal empowerment. The key to personal transformation comes from a self-responsibility that embraces a vitally human connection to the world.

We can take our cue from the environmentalists. In response to the climate crisis, environmentalists are asking us to re-assess our “carbon footprints,” by living differently and working toward making that footprint shrink.

And this is where the concept of a “heartprint” can help us find answers to our questions or a path from the alienation that marks too much of contemporary life.. What is a heartprint? According to Karen Trueheart, a heartprint is the impression made by every feeling, thought, word, and deed.

At every moment, we are generating heartprints. Anger, fear, ignorance, and hatred create heartprints. They literally leave their mark within us and are picked up by mirror neurons in others and oftentimes acted out unconsciously. They create a ripple effect expanding in ever widening circles. If we don’t take care to feel these destructive emotions deeply and mindfully, and using their energy wisely, these heartprints cause much of the world’s pain and suffering, resulting the poisoned emotional climate we live in. On the other hand, heartprints generated by love, compassion, and kindness, love, understanding affect our inner and outer climate, and we create those too.

According to Trueheart, what we need is an emotional climate change, a shift in the emotional atmosphere. This doesn’t mean we become emotional Nazis attempting to stamp out feelings we see as “negative.” In fact, the opposite is true: if we consciously and mindfully experience all our inner emotions, we are confronted with the potential of transforming even the negative. Those that garden know too well that we can turn weeds into mulch. Farmers take shit and use it to grow life-sustaining crops. It’s the same with feelings. By feeling deeply, thinking clearly, and acting wisely, we can create heartprints for humanity and all life on earth. I realize this sounds like too much for all you reality-TV-watching, too-cool-to-care motherfuckers. I realize for those who have learned helplessness at a deep level, this may even sound impossible.

Maybe not. But try to let go of the dogma and all the trivial shit for one just a moment. Act as if it’s all not hopeless. Perhaps you have heard of the Butterfly Effect. In scientific Chaos theory, a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can potentially affect the weather in New York City. Chaos theory recognizes the profound interconnectedness inherent in all existence -- a very real connectedness on a global scale. In addition, current scientific findings on the neurological basis of social intelligence reveals there is an emotional equivalent that is called The Heartprint Effect.

Climatologists have used the Butterfly Effect to help us understand our participation in global warming and have shown us how to understand our behavior. By understanding the Butterfly Effect, we can see how small actions like planting a tree, changing a light bulb, or dialing back our thermostats even a little really do make a difference.

Conversely, by understanding the Heartprint Effect, we can begin to internalize our importance in a movement that creates a more peaceful and sustainable world. We can generate our inner light to change our internal climate. And this in turn creates the psychological spaces that can help others do the same. In other words, drop the Jesus talk and be like Jesus. Be the change you want to see in the world, Gandhi said. Understanding The Heartprint Effect could take something that seems impossible and help make it easier, or at least “doable.” 

Think of it, with every movement of our hearts and minds, we contribute to the emotional and mental climate of the world. If you can take this premise as true, then you can make a difference for the better. If our mission is to do away with the trivial in favor of psycho-spiritual integration, then the Heartprint Effect let’s us know that even a simple act of kindness contributes to global change. 

For those looking to act, I have listed some resources below. I’ll leave you with the following:

In the Buddhist tradition, compassion is systematically developed through metta mediation. Metta meditation begins with the repetition of the following mantra: May I be kind. May I be peaceful. May I be free from suffering. The point being that you progress through stages so that eventually you’re doing metta for all sentient beings (even teabaggers LOL!). In traditional practice, a student is not allowed to offer metta for others until the teacher is sure the student can make this offering, not out of need, but from a full and open heart.

For an illustration of the power of this approach, read the story of anonymous donors paying off lay-away accounts across the nation (here). Read it and pay attention to what simply reading about those acts do to your internal emotional climate. What does the story do to your hope about humanity? Notice what brings you true joy and fills you with peace. Then notice how when you feel this way, your way of relating to the world changes.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Resources

#OccupyWallStreet: Regardless of what you might have heard, the reality is that the Occupy Movement is a laboratory composed of many people from many walks of life seeking to reconceptualize the kind of society we live in. nycga.net is the New York City site where you can join (or form your own) working group and find out about events and other occupations across the globe (here).

Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning: to learn more about social and emotional learning in schools (here)

Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education: promoting human values and a sense of oneness within humanity (here)

Common Peace: Center for the advancement of nonviolence (here)

M. K. Gandhi Institute: Inspiring and supporting individual and group efforts to end violence (here)

Alliance for a New Humanity: To join with like-hearted individuals and groups (here)

Mind and Life Institute: To learn more about the science behind The Heartprint Effect (here)

The Network of Spiritual Progressives: an activist group (here)

We the World: Forming international networks of collaboration and action (here)

The Heartprint website (here)

Why I Fight

¡Hola mi Gente!

So… Time magazine awarded their “Person of the Year” title to “The Protestor.” How nice, though I would take anything they give with a grain of salt. No. 4 on Time’s list, for example, was Rep. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican whom the magazine credits with bringing to the front of the national consciousness an issue that Washington was loath to confront: America’s ballooning national debt.

::blank stare::

FUCK you, Time, but thanks anyway. If it were up to me, I would’ve voted for the almost 40 percent of American children who are now homeless.

* * *

Standing for equality and a just society is hard work. In fact, it’s not only hard, but oftentimes not every rewarding. It certainly isn’t rewarding in the economic sense, that’s for sure. I will very likely die before I see a country where children won’t starve needlessly, for example. I probably will not live to see an economic system that works for the majority of the people and not the few.

I might not even live to see meaningful electoral reform, or elections that aren’t won or lost by how much money a candidate can amass from the richest 1%.

Shit, I probably won’t live to see a time where we will all get together as a nation and have a real heart-to-heart on race and inequality. But yet, these are some of the things I stand for too long, whenever I stood up, there weren’t too many of you having my back. Until this year, in fact, people like me operated in silos -- disconnected from one another, doing impossible work with little resources and only our passionate reason to sustain us.

People often ask me, “Why?” They ask me why I bother, even knowing all of the above. And when they ask, I tell them the following true story:

I was once marching in DC with tens of thousands of other protestors and on that particular day, I really wasn’t feeling it. I was tired. And what I mean by tired, was a bone-weary fatigue that was physical, psychological, and spiritual. I was there, marching and seriously reconsidering the whole mess. What's the use, I thought to myself. We’ll protest and tomorrow things will go back to normal. And the people who should be out here with pitchforks and torches will be watching TV or some such nonsense.

It was at this time that I turned to an elderly lady who had made the trip with us that day. She was well-known in her community, having been an elementary school teacher for decades. She was, like, everybody’s teacher, a universal mother archetype. And there she was walking with the help of a cane -- a woman I knew had marched in countless protests, from the Civil Rights movements of the late 50s on.

So I turned to her and I asked her. I questioned the validity of protest and dissent. I expressed my doubts, my frustrations, and feelings of impotence. “Why do all this, Mrs. _____? It doesn’t make a difference.”

She stopped, turned to me and said, “If you’re a Latino or an African American, it’s very likely that you have an ancestor who fought for freedom and died fighting though they knew they would never see the light of a free day in their lifetime. You probably have a woman in your lineage who fought against violence against women and for the right of a woman to be treated as human being although she probably paid a great price for that struggle and she did so probably knowing in her heart, that she would ever see the day where women would be treated with respect and as equals."

“You probably have an ancestor somewhere in your background that got his head busted in by strike breakers for fighting for a fair day’s work and the right to bargain collectively. In fact, you probably have a long line of ancestors who fought for social justice and freedom though they knew their world would never be like that.”

“And you know why they fought? They fought so that you and I could live in a better and more just world and because not fighting meant that they would be a player to condemning their children to live enslaved. So when you march today, remember that you honor the sacrifices of those who walked before us. When you march today, remember that you are passing that honorable legacy to the children who come after us.”

Then she took my face in her old, gnarled hands and said, “Even if we never accomplish anything, Eddie, what matters is that we fought and struggled and stood for something, because the ripples of our actions today will reverberate and find seed in the hearts of the children where it will flower as freedom, or a yearning for freedom. It doesn’t matter if these clowns don’t change. What matters is what you stand for. Anything less is slavery.”

Since that day, I have never questioned my mission for social justice and whenever I get tired, I remember my teacher and her plea to honor my ancestors.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization

What Really Matters, pt. I

¡Hola mi Gente!

Today I will be at a conference/ strategy meeting on how to address mass incarceration for most of the day. Have a great day, and when I come back, I want to know about at least one thing new you learned today. LOL!

I wrote the following over five years ago as part of my annual series on the holidays often posted under the heading, “What Really Matters.” In reading this, I see that I have been actively pursuing the #OccupyWallStreet ethos for quite some time.

* * *

The holiest of all holidays are those… Kept by ourselves in silence and apart…

The secret anniversaries of the heart.

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The holidays were meant as an opportunity for us to set aside our work and routines – to give ourselves permission to put away, for the moment, our problems, and burdens. They were meant to be a time for joining with others to celebrate life. However, this is not such an easy thing to do. Maybe together we can re-learn from each other how to do it, who knows?

We live in different times from my childhood memories. I don’t think the loss of family is due to some in-born depravity of the current generation. I believe our times are intentionally designed to keep us busy and fearful. Among industrialized nations, Americans work the longest hours, often for the least amount of money. Corporations rule and often pay less in taxes than you and I. Labor organizing, weakened by laws (often written by corporate lobbyists), and propaganda, has resulted in a suppression of wages the like never before seen in this country. In real dollars, you make less today than you did 20 years ago and you work far longer hours. Corporate downsizing, which benefits the few at the expense of the many, keeps you in fear of your job because, in spite of the idiotic books proclaiming a nation of millionaires, you’re more than likely one or two paychecks away for utter homelessness.

So you make trades. You trade in time with your loved ones for longer work hours. Today, we might have several TVs but we just don’t have the time to watch it with our children or with each other. We create the concept of “quality time,” but you and I both know there’s no such thing. Time is time, don’t get all new on me, okay? Even our free time is spent running around like a nut, making meetings, shuttling kids between practices and functions. On vacations, we take our laptops and blackberries, answer emails, make conference calls. I have a bunch of vacation time piled up, but god forbid if I dared ask for three weeks vacation! There would be meetings I would miss and even if I demanded those three weeks and took them, people at my place of employment would shake their heads in shame.

We’re like the hamsters on the Wheel of Life, exerting a lot of energy but never getting anywhere, never having enough time.

But who said we have to have an economy based on such a lifestyle? Why should we fear for our jobs, take away time from our loved ones, worry that we might not have health insurance? Who said it has to be that way? Because, believe me, it doesn’t have to be that way. It isn’t “business,” it’s oppression and we’ve allowed the ten percent who own the 90 percent, dictate to us how we should live.

Most of us do not always see the connections between the personal struggles we may be facing and the changes in the larger economy, such as longer working hours, the necessity of working multiple jobs, and the inability to save money. In fact, we are encouraged to see our problems as purely personal. In today’s version of Corporate Christianity, if you’re poor, it’s because there’s something wrong with you. Furthermore, even when we do manage to see the link between larger economic forces and our daily lives, we don’t believe we can do anything to improve our circumstances. I hear it too often, “It’s the way things are,” “It ain’t personal, it’s business.”

Bullshit!

It is personal, and there are alternatives, contrary to what the naysayers might tell you.

The most prosperous period of this nation was during a time where wealth was more evenly distributed. While racism made it harder for people of color, prosperity was more easily accessible and better shared by the majority of people in society than it is today. There is no reason why this should longer be true in the present. During the last 30 years or so, the rules of the economic game have been changed by wealthy individuals and corporations -- and they can be changed by people like us.

They have to be changed, or it will all crumble. They can be changed if only you would stop believing the hype.

What to do? Well, I have long ago learned that the holidays don’t have to be perfect. The days of 704 E. 5^th St. -- of extended families living together -- are gone, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean we throw away the baby with the bathwater. Perhaps we all can start by making that effort to turn within and share, not a material gift, but that piece of ourselves that connects us all: a small gesture, a smile, an attempt to reach out. We certainly need to question the wisdom of the economic policies that benefit the few at the expense of the many and that will not be changed by letter-writing and voting alone. We need to start talking to one another, getting the real information, creating dialog and demanding answers for our elected leaders. The media, owned by a handful of corporations, will not ask the questions that need to be asked. Democracy is not capitalism. Nor is it a spectator sport. The most important political office in this particular democracy my friend is you, the citizen. It’s all within our grasp. 

I’m not a Christian, but as I see it one holiday message is that a man -- really an ordinary man, a mere carpenter -- who never even owned his own home, who never wrote a book, or invented anything, a quite poor man, in fact, was able to change the world with a message of love. Now, that’s some shit!

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Empty Rhetoric, Inequality, Education and Heroes

¡Hola mi Gente!

I’m in pain! My back is killing me! Feel sorry for me! LOL

* * *

To see the truth, contemplate all phenomena as a lie.

-- Thaganapa

Did you hear? The DNC and Charlotte, NC, the host city for the Democratic National Convention next year to renominate President Obama, has announced that it will actively repress planned Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. The city council has already enacted a series of restrictions on the allowed locations in which protesters can demonstrate and the outright ban on overnight stays.

Goes to show that the “two-party system” is in actuality a bad imitation of a wrestling match -- complete with bad guy/ good guy role plays -- in which the outcome has been decided.

Expect major fallout for the dems if this is allowed. As with the empty talk of hope, Dems want to exploit of the rhetoric of the #OccupyWallStreet movement without actually demonstrating a commitment to it.

I see one of two things happening: either we, the people, fight for real electoral reform, or we’re doomed.

In any case, the legality of these actions is being challenged by the Lawyer’s Guild and whatever the outcome, I don’t see this stopping the many activists who plan to be there.

* * *

Speaking of OWS, the good people at Crooked Timber brought my attention to an excellent Times article on education and inequality. The authors draw from the work of Sean Reardon (here), who uncovers a substantial correlation between income inequality and educational achievement. They pull no punches:

The Occupy movement has catalyzed rising anxiety over income inequality; we desperately need a similar reminder of the relationship between economic advantage and student performance.

The correlation has been abundantly documented, notably by the famous Coleman Report in 1966. New research by Sean F. Reardon of Stanford University traces the achievement gap between children from high- and low-income families over the last 50 years and finds that it now far exceeds the gap between white and black students.

Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that more than 40 percent of the variation in average reading scores and 46 percent of the variation in average math scores across states is associated with variation in child poverty rates.

International research tells the same story. Results of the 2009 reading tests conducted by the Program for International Student Assessment show that, among 15-year-olds in the United States and the 13 countries whose students outperformed ours, students with lower economic and social status had far lower test scores than their more advantaged counterparts within every country. Can anyone credibly believe that the mediocre overall performance of American students on international tests is unrelated to the fact that one-fifth of American children live in poverty?

Full Times article here. More on the above topics later in the week... 

* * *

And last, but not least, I was invited to, but (due to work) was unable to attend, an action against police abuse organized by the Parents for Occupy Wall Street. I have written on these pages before on education (here) and how true education is a liberating and transformative act. 

Unfortunately, what passes for education in the US these days is anything but liberating. By the time children pass into adolescence and adulthood, they have come to dread thinking. Those who have escaped the dread of thinking will instead fall prey to the assumption that thinking will not be necessary; that all is needed is to retain information and to regurgitate it at the appropriate moments. 

Those that enter higher education similarly find themselves confronted by a world where independent thinking isn’t encouraged. Fortunately, there are some classrooms in which individual professors work to educate as a practice of freedom. In these settings, thinking, and more importantly critical thinking, is what matters.

The following video illustrates what happens when children are encouraged to think for themselves, to ask for evidence, to question authority, and what is possible if they are encouraged and supported by their parents in their actions.The response by the officials, however, demonstrate that our social institutions are vehemently opposed to freedom:

Today, these children and their parents are my heroes. They should be yours, as well.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Racism and #OccupyWallStreet

¡Hola Mi Gente!
I’ve been spending almost all of my free time at the #OccupyWallStreet (OWS) site. By the time I get home, I barely have enough time for myself, let alone write. I will say that what’s happening is one of the most exciting, politically speaking, in a long time.

Sometimes you can often tell the effectiveness of a person or a movement by the amount of venom spewed at it. The corporate-owned media still cannot effectively put a spin on the movement because its strategy and conceptualization is foreign to the current paradigm. Fox News accuses us of being anti-Semites one day, secretly run by George Soros the next, dirty hippies and clueless, self-indulgent trust fund babies from the beginning, and more recently, a movement secretly run by, yup, ACORN.

The rest of the cable news infotainment media are little better, though Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann both seem to have a better grasp. And now I’m hearing from the black/ brown blogosphere that OWS is -- racist!

I believe that all these people should hold a meeting and decide once and for all, what we are. Though I don’t have the time (wish I had a laptop!) necessary to address the following, I feel a need to speak on it.

[On a side note, I was beyond ecstatic to learn one of my heros, Ms. Davis, visited us this past Sunday.]

* * *

Race, Class, Gender, Power and #OccupyWallStreet

And I guess what I would say is that we can't think narrowly about movements for black liberation and we can't necessarily see this class division as simply a product or a certain strategy that black movements have developed for liberation.

-- Angela Y. Davis

I consider myself a feminist. I am down with women’s rights because I don’t see them as separate from my own. Yet, I have to understand and recognize that as a man raised is in a misogynistic society, I most likely carry vestiges of that social conditioning and that in order to be more liberated, I have to own up to and learn to unpack that conditioning.

I am down with equal rights for my LGBT brothers and sisters, but I have to understand that my perspective is somewhat informed as a heterosexual male in a society that oppresses homosexuality.

As a man, I take for granted many things that others can’t. For example, something as mundane as walking down the street is infinitely different for a woman than it is for me. I take it for granted that I can walk in public and not dread having complete strangers aggressively proposition me sexually, or make comments about the size of my cock, or my supposed sluttishness. I can walk down a dark street without the fear of rape being foremost in my mind. I take these for granted -- most women can’t.

I am down with “the cause” as they say, down with equality and freedom, and am committed to helping create a true democratic process a reality. I work as an activist, mostly in progressive, nonprofit organizations (or I did, LOL!). Still, that doesn’t mean I live outside of the context of a society that is racist, misogynistic and homophobic, along with many other forms of oppression.

One day, a colleague approached me obviously distressed. She was angry for what she saw as forms of oppression operating within our organization. “We should be better than this,” she said almost in tears.

I challenged her. I challenged her idea that as a nonprofit, as progressives working together for progressive causes, that we’re somehow different from the larger society we were seeking to reform. I told her that what should separate us from the rest of society is the knowledge and recognition of how we are all conditioned to internalize forms of oppression. I told her that our work is to create the world we seek by becoming, not by doing.

This was over ten years ago, and this woman, who I consider a friend as well as a professional ally always reminds me of that day because she says it was an epiphany for her (it was a revelation for me as well).

Which brings to my main point today: is #OccupyWallStreet “racist”? My answer would be a resounding, “no!” On the other hand, it would be incorrect to say that the same forms of oppression that plague our larger society don’t exist within the #OccupyWallStreet movement. That would be bullshit. But why would anyone expect any different? We, for that matter, no one, don’t exist in a vacuum outside the social context that we’re attempting to critique and change. However, to characterize the movement as “white” or “racist” is utterly without merit. It’s no different than Fox News claiming we’re a bunch of anti-semites, or the Wall Street Journal editorializing on our perceived naiveté.

One day, while sitting in on a working group, a white man stated that using “progressive stack” (the practice of giving priority to traditionally marginalized voices) was unfair and racist. Before I could say anything, one white woman, a white man, and gay white male immediately responded, pointing out that it was his race-blind perception that was racist. The white woman was most vehement: “The only ones I see fuckin’ complain about progressive stack are entitled white guys and you need to get over it!”

By the time I got to him, he was simply parroting the tired cliché that all forms of preference were racist. I corrected him and told him progressive is prejudiced (in a just manner) but not racist.

Two weekends ago, while facilitating during a training, another white male expressed that he most appreciated progressive stack because he saw it as an empowering tool that encouraged and nurtured the voices he, as a white male, almost never got to hear. Yesterday, I heard a man open up to the group in a very emotional and painful way, how being active in the movement has affected him. He stated that while he always felt he was open-minded and tolerant, being confronted with the reality of oppression on a daily basis (as happens at OWS) and seeing how he almost unconsciously contributes to that oppression has changed him profoundly.

I often joke with some white males I meet that I make immediate assumptions about them simply because they’re young and white. I tell them that I immediately assume they’re from Armpit, Iowa somewhere raised growing corn on some sheep-fuckin farm somewhere. LOL! I am only half-kidding: if I am honest with myself, I have to admit that I have to constantly confront my own biases, prejudices, and assumptions as well.

What I can say is that the #OccupyWallStreet movement is grappling with issues of race, gender, power, and class in ways not seen in many other places. There are workshops on oppression addressing the conflicts, arising from the many isms that plague our larger society. And while it’s far from ideal, I see a willingness, indeed, a hunger, to confront and unpack all this baggage. Being at the NYC Occupation, I get to talk with many people from other occupations. I have sat down with and shared experiences with and learned from people from occupations in Oakland, Philadelphia, Chicago, Florida, activists from Europe and China, Palestinians, all looking for ways to address the inequities that exist globally.

It’s far from the ideal, but movements aren’t built simply from the bullshit rhetoric of hope and change. Movements aren’t built from like-minded people from similar backgrounds coming together. On the contrary, real movement-building consists of bringing together previously disenfranchised and segregated groups, groups that may hold old resentments, conflicts, and grievances. Movements are built on helping those of us (the 99%) empower ourselves and agreeing to recognize that these inequalities exist but will never change until we acknowledge them and learn how to properly address them. This is not a “white” movement -- it will never exist as a racist white movement because that movement already exists. We’re here, and we’re looking to include, to find ways to include, my black and brown brothers and sisters. We’re looking to make it welcoming and safe for women, for the transgendered, the homeless, the hungry, the disenfranchised, and we’re struggling to hold it all together under incredibly difficult circumstances. The question for me, as a Latino, is whether my brothers and sisters will answer the call or go back to voting for the empty rhetoric of “hope” and “change.”

F-U-C-K hope and empty words, the time to act is now. If you’re waiting for the perfect moment at the perfect time in the perfect place, then you’re not living, you’re busy dying.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization.